How Our Lives Go
by Rayne Hargreaves
Summary: Written for Fans of the Ladies of Kyou Kara Maou LJ community. 25 sentences that highlight different aspects of their lives. First chapter: Cecilie von Spitzberg- Like a Merry-go-Round.


**How Our Lives Go  
**Cecilie von Spitzberg

_A merry-go-round that never stops.  
Speeding up and slowing down  
at the oddest times you can imagine,  
but ultimately is one of the best rides that you can be on  
no matter what age you are._

. o . o . o . o .

**Image**

There was a hallway in Blood Pledge Castle that was separate from the one that held Shinou Heika and Daikenja's enormous portraits, a hallway where the portraits of past Maous were hung; most of them had been painted at a time where the Maou in question had accomplished something particularly spectacular for Shin Makoku, but her portrait had been one of the exceptions- as she felt she hadn't contributed anything noteworthy during her time as a Maou, she had her image painted at a time when she was the most happy- on her 1,500th birthday, the same day her tenth grandchild had been set into her arms.

**Belong**

Yuuri Heika had brought back something from Earth he called a 'photo album', and in it, there were amazingly well drawn pictures of events and moments that she could remember very well, captured to the most minute detail (_he had tried to explain how he'd used a 'camera' to draw the pictures, but she didn't really understand_)- there were different sections of the 'album' to categorize different people and group members, but what caught her eye had been the little inscription under her section: _Cecilie von Spitzberg, matriarch of our Shin Makoku family_- it sounded right to her; it described where she belonged.

**Tight**

She was glad she was a mother and not a father- mothers got to give their children the biggest hugs without ever being questioned on why the hug was given until said children had outgrown them- it was why while they were growing up, she'd given Gwendel, Konrad, and Wolfram the tightest hugs ever, because she never knew when they wouldn't like them anymore, and she knew it would break her heart when they finally would gently refuse one.

**Jubilee**

She always made a point of throwing Yuuri and Wolfram huge anniversary parties that successively grew more huge with each passing year, but with her own anniversary (_a date that combined the anniversaries of all three of her past marriage dates_), she preferred the parties to consist of herself only- that way she could reminisce on her deceased husbands and thank them for letting her love them, because that was what had given her the life and children she had today.

**Classic**

She was the classic example of what any mother _wouldn't_ want their daughter to grow up to be, and she knew that, of course, so after meeting Anissina, who was dead set against the traditional roles of women in their society, she smiled; and after hearing her little Greta say that when she grew up, she wanted to be a mix of her Mama Cheri and Anissina, she couldn't help but laugh (_"My dear, when you grow up, you will be a woman to be reckoned with"_).

**Practiced**

She'd had three husbands before, and many other courtiers besides, so it was a practiced hand that she laced up a protesting Wolfram into his lacy pink corset (_"Yuuri Heika will looove undoing those laces tonight!"_), snapped garters onto his legs (_"Because I just know Yuuri Heika is going to appreciate the view when he pulls them off"_), and wiggled him into his stiletto heels (_"Very sexy when you're trying to get on top"_)- needless to say, Wolfram was mortified when it was all over (_her dress up time, not his wedding night- he enjoyed the latter very much, especially since she'd been right about everything_).

**Eager**

If there was one thing she knew, it was that any child of hers would be spoiled and spoiled well; she'd been so eager to provide clothes for Greta when she'd come that she'd gone just the tiniest bit overboard- she'd designed not only clothes for the newly arrived seven year-old Greta, but also ten year-old Greta, twelve year-old Greta, fifteen year-old Greta, eighteen year-old Greta, twenty year-old Greta...

**Manual**

She hadn't been given a manual on raising children as a single parent (_well, as 'single parent' as you could get with a castle full of servants_), and sometimes she wondered if she _had_ been given one, if her children would've been better off (_she knew her methods weren't exactly the most orthodox_)- but looking at Gwendel, Konrad, and Wolfram now, she knows that the manual could go use fire Maryoku on itself; they'd come out perfect the way she raised them.

**Disguise**

She liked her fighting outfit very much, not only because it was very comfortable (_she'd worn leather many, many times before, but for more...different reasons_) and very stylish (_she'd designed it herself!_), but because it gave her a raw sense of power that she rarely got to show anyone- not to mention it was delightfully fun running around posing as a masked warrior lady whipping the bad guys in the name of justice.

**Stitch**

She was a mother, and as thus was expected to mend broken hearts (_Shinou knows how often Wolfram had ranted his Yuuri troubles to her_), but she wasn't a seamstress in the least- she unknowingly left gaping holes when she tried sewing; and when she received news that her FanFan had been murdered, she broke down crying- how could she possibly stitch up her own broken heart when she could barely do it for others?

**Addiction**

She knew that Shinou Heika had planned for her to marry those three men so she would bear their children and continue on their bloodlines, but she couldn't help but feel there was a pull to them separate from his influence- the fantasies she'd had as a child had come true when she'd married those three men, the addiction to happily-ever-afters fufilled when she'd fallen in love with first, a tall, dark, and handsome man, second, a dashing knight, and third, a pretty boy.

**Vocal**

Perhaps she was being a bit too vocal about her wishes, but she had an excuse, she thought as she decorated the newly pronounced 'YuuRam shrine room' (_which was really just their bedroom_) with various 'YuuRam' paraphernalia she'd borrowed from the maids- how could she have refused Greta when she'd asked for her help in helping her daddy and papa realize their love for each other?

**Bliss**

Few women got the chance to call themselves great-great-grandmothers, she knew, so when _all_ of her children (_her sons and their children and their children and their children_) stood on the dock, wishing her good luck on her free and easy journey for love, she couldn't help but feel great bliss in knowing that she'd already found a great love of a different sort- it was right there in front of her.

**Guilty**

Okay, she'd admit it- it'd been her elaborate plan to have an 'interested' (_read: bribed_) nobleman come to court Wolfram (_which resulted in a suddenly jealous Yuuri Heika, a tense confrontation, and a shouting argument_), but it was all okay now that they were in the post-confession make-out stage (_honestly, nobody had any idea how many plans she had gone through to get them to this point_).

**Apron**

She had always disliked the aprons that Doria, Sanguria, Lazania, Effe, and all the other maids wore, so after meeting with Jennifer (_or was it Miko?_) and getting to try on her cute aprons, she'd gone on an apron-designing frenzy; Anissina had been kind enough to design 'Sew-Anything-on-Anything'-kun to accommodate her newest obsession, though its test run had malfunctioned and resulted in enough aprons to supply all of Shin Makoku.

**Inwardly**

The first time she had held Gwendel, she had inwardly thought that there was no other child she'd ever love more- by the time she had given birth to Wolfram, she knew that she loved them all equallly and with all her heart; when she finally got to hold her first grandchild in her arms, she knew that the love she had for them all couldn't be held in her heart alone- it was held in the sky, never ending and all encompassing.

**Notable**

It saddened her somewhat that the most notable things she would go down in the history books was an incapable Maou, a quirky mother, and a promiscuous lover, but Shinou assured her that what she'd done was right for the future, her sons told her that they loved her anyways, and she could've sworn that her past lovers had come to her in dreams and told her that it was better to spread her vast love to everyone, so she felt a little bit better about herself.

**Questionable**

Of course she knew how she'd raised Wolfram was questionable- dressing him up in very girly clothes and grooming him to look so effeminate, those weren't actions that she did on a whim; she'd had a feeling that after having her selfish little prince, she wouldn't be able to have another child, so she'd lavished all of her 'daughter instincts' on him just as she had his brothers- thankfully, it wasn't long later until Greta came into her family, so she finally got to play dress up with a little girl that actually liked the clothes (_and later on, she and Jennifer happily exchanged baby pictures of their sons, much to their horror_).

**Rise**

Yuuri Heika had told her once about something he'd learned in 'math class', something called 'rise over run'; and while he had told her it had no philosophical merit whatsoever, she thought it was a wonderful saying to live by- before exerting effort and energy into running, one must rise first, in the process mentally and physically preparing for the trials to come (_she'd chanted it as a mantra when she herself rose in the morning, and was very disappointed when Yuuri Heika sheepishly told her that it wouldn't be a good idea to change her family motto to match it_).

**Whirlwind**

His mother, Wolfram decided, was a veritable whirlwind of activity when it came to these contests of hers- after the _(shockingly_) overwhelming success of her first Miss World Drag Queen Pageant, she'd thrown in every effort to create more and more of these sorts of events (_unfortunately with Anissina providing plenty of ideas for her to use_), and he understood how much she enjoyed organizing them...but why in the hell did he have to go through these convoluted Earth courting traditions, competing against other _men_ in order to win Yuuri's hand in marriage, _which he already had?!_

**Glow**

Many years after Yuuri's reign as Maou, his grandson would find it his duty to travel to Earth to find a vessel for his grandmother's soul; he was happy to see, when it was given to him, that it was perfectly spherical, and glowed unlike anything else he'd seen- he compared it to the light of a comet streaking across the sky, like he was seeing in Earth's sky above him, and prayed that the vessel of his grandmother's soul would dazzle the loved ones that he or she touched, allowing them to see the wonderfully beautiful things in life, like his grandmother had done for him.

**Hue**

Seeing as gardening was her passion (_besides scheming ways for her sons to get married_), it wasn't long (_approximately 1,300 years_) before anyone who saw her garden could swear she had every color and in-between hue under the rainbow in it- she always said she didn't and she wouldn't stop until she did and had named every last flower, so the loved ones she named them after would see the colors she saw in them in the flowers she'd bred.

**Orbit**

She sometimes felt like a comet in the world that Yuuri Heika and her children lived in- an interesting phenomenon, but always seen in passing; it was only after her death did Konrad say in his eulogy for her that she had been like a comet in their lives- beautiful and behind the scenes, but always there, and that was what had counted.

**Set**

Her life had been set into stone long before her birth, thanks to Shinou Heika, but she couldn't have asked for a better life; she loved, she lost, she prevailed, she failed; she had risen and run, successfully most of the time, and as a woman, had brought children into this world- had her own excerpt written in the grand story-book called life; all she could ask for now was to do it all over again with her loved ones in the afterlife.

_Fin._

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

I really like how these turned out- I had to think quite a bit on what kind of sentences to write for each topic (which had been chosen from my Webster's dictionary via randomly choosing a page and then picking a word I liked from that page), but most of them came out in the way I wanted to illustrate them. Cheri is such a great character. She's tied with Anissina for my favorite KKM female chararacter. Cheri is one of those support characters who has a lot to do with other people's histories, but who's own history isn't discussed that much, which leaves a lot that can be interpreted- I love those kinds of characters. It gives you a lot of wiggle room when you write about them. Then again, a lot of characters, support or no, don't get their full histories discussed in KKM... Yay wiggle room! 8D

As a side note, I know that most of my 'sentences' can be split up into two or more sentences, but for convention's sake, I just altered them to truly be 'one sentence' by adding lots of hypens, commas, and semi-colons. So I'm sorry if that bothers you (the length of my sentences, I mean).

Next up is Annissina von Karbelnikoff! Originally I wanted to do Greta next, since I adore her to bits...but I want to wait until the subs for Episode 93 are out before I write her 25 sentences (and gods know how long it might take for the subs to come out...watch as the sub comes out the next day after I post this -laugh-).

Kyou Kara Maou does not belong to me, otherwise Yuuri would have long already confessed his feelings to Wolfram.  
Review please? It makes me happy -smilesmile-


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